I'm an LA-based writer and management consultant. I was an adviser and editor for many years for the father of modern leadership studies, the late USC professor Warren Bennis. And over the past twenty years, I’ve been a chief storyteller for USC, during a time in which Bennis and other leaders helped it skyrocket in global reputation and productivity. I bring a different perspective to leadership--some sober perspective about the realities of being "in charge," along with advice on how to tell great stories that mobilize great communities. I've written for dozens of publications around the world, including the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and Japan Times. I serve as a University Fellow at USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy and am a member of the Pacific Council for International Policy. My book Leadership Is Hell (Figueroa Press, 2014) is available on Amazon; all proceeds benefit programs that make college accessible to promising LA urban schoolchildren.

Crisis Management 101: First, Be A Grownup

How ready are you for your next unscheduled controversy? (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

The Obama administration, like most second-term presidencies, is getting bogged in scandal. It’s a good time to ask how well you and your organization are prepared for your next unscheduled controversy.

A few key principles should guide you during periods of crisis:

1. Acknowledge the gap in perspective between you and outsiders.

In a crisis, your primal and animalistic instincts will kick in – operating in “fight or flight” mode, or acting like a cornered animal. Everything about your situation will look different to you than to those on the outside.

In your mind, you will sense that your every existence is under imminent threat. You will see your empire dissolving in full, humiliating public view. In others’ minds, they just want to see you act like an adult and take responsibility for fixing a problem.

Admit that you and your inside peers aren’t going to be seeing the situation the same way that a detached observer would. And admit that’s a problem. Try to get in the shoes of an investigative reporter, who probably doesn’t want to destroy you but who merely wants to see you act like a grownup, not a frightened child.

Leaders are naturally narcissistic—it’s why they’re at the front of the pack, not the back. That means that, if you’re a leader, you probably never spent much time admitting weaknesses to your family, peers or competitors. It means you probably can’t even admit to your spouse or partner that you forgot to take care of an errand you’d promised to run. Instead you make excuses and rationalizations.

But if you can’t handle a little failure in your private life, you’ll be a catastrophe during a genuine public crisis. Spare yourself and your followers that fate, and learn ahead of time to admit you’re imperfect and that you could stand to improve.

3. Don’t let your lawyers win every argument during crisis mode.

In most organizations outside of politics, the tendency is to turtle or to ostrich into a defensive mode. This tendency is usually aggravated and reinforced by company lawyers.

There’s a reason lawyers dominate crisis-management discussions. Most of them have impressive credentials to start with, and, frankly, they’re the only ones who spent years training in how to win every argument.

But lawyers, especially in a crisis, tend to think first about minimizing risk, at the cost of every other consideration. They tend to bring powerful intellectual rationalizations of those primal fears. And you and your company typically end up looking Nixonian when you’re simply terrified.

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Great article. Crisis needs to be foreseen and organizations need to be prepared. It’s a matter of training, once crisis hits, the ones who did prepare will react better. During crisis, weaknesses get magnified. One of those is the ability to feel and say “sorry”.